The Reel Muddhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd
Films and other audiovisual materials from the Mudd Manuscript LibraryFri, 06 Feb 2015 14:00:59 +0000en-UShourly1“Climates of the Past”https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2015/02/climates-of-the-past/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2015/02/climates-of-the-past/#commentsFri, 06 Feb 2015 14:00:59 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/?p=517Continue reading →]]>These days, most Americans think of PBS when they think of educational television, but in the 1950s, viewers expected commercial networks to offer this sort of programming. In 1952, New York’s WNBT (NBC) offered Princeton University a grant for faculty to develop a variety of shows in their areas of expertise suitable for a mass audience. Yale, Brown, Rutgers, Columbia, NYU, and Georgetown were all already involved in similar endeavors. By 1954, 84 colleges and universities were involved in creating educational television. Some even offered college credit to viewers.

Princeton was ready to go on the air in 1954. The series, Princeton ’54, was only shown in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region, but the program was successful enough that NBC decided to show its successor, Princeton ’55, throughout the eastern United States, in a covetable Sunday afternoon time slot. The series was meant to appeal to diverse interests, opening with “Communists, and Who They Are” with Prof. Gabriel A. Almond (Woodrow Wilson School) on January 2, 1955, and drawing upon faculty in English, music, the Creative Arts Program, and geology, among others for its 13-episdode season.

Today, we’re sharing the program that aired sixty years ago today, on February 6, 1955. Geology professor Erling Dorf presented “Climates of the Past,” asserting that the Earth was going through a period of warming within an epoch of cooling.

Princeton followed up with a third and final season, Princeton ’56, the following year.

[We recently digitized a campaign film from the Adlai E. Stevenson Papers, located in our Public Policy Papers. The film, “Nuclear Test Ban,” was produced as a televised campaign program for Stevenson’s 1956 presidential bid against Dwight D. Eisenhower. The film speaks to an important transitional moment in the American encounter with nuclear weapons.]

With a deafening roar, a mushroom cloud blossoms on the screen. As viewers watch the cloud of smoke, dust, and water vapor take its awful form, a narrator declares, “this is the H-Bomb at work… This is the means for destroying all living things on earth.”

The scene cuts to Adlai Stevenson, Democratic candidate in the 1956 presidential election, as he makes his case to the American public for a ban on hydrogen bomb testing. Stevenson is quick to dispel the notion that his proposal is simply an election maneuver: the issue “was and it is too serious for that,” despite then-Vice President Richard Nixon’s assertion that a ban was “catastrophic nonsense.”

For the next twenty-three minutes, Stevenson and a group of experts in the field present a grim assessment of the possible consequences of America’s nuclear testing: sickness, war, and horrors unknown.

The film ends with Stevenson’s disquieting appeal: “I believe we must somehow guarantee mankind against the horrible destructiveness of the hydrogen bomb… I believe we have no alternative.”

H-bombs, also known as hydrogen, thermonuclear, or fusion bombs, were many times more powerful than anything the world had seen before. They destroyed larger areas and released more toxic radiation into the atmosphere than earlier atomic bombs. During its developmental stages, the H-bomb was coined as “The Super,” a moniker that attests to the radical differences between it and previous weapons.

Since shortly after World War II – and before the development of hydrogen bombs – nuclear physicists and other public intellectuals had cautioned against the further development of nuclear technology. Still, the added danger of the H-bomb only attracted the attention of a minority of concerned citizens by 1956. Indeed, Republicans attacked Stevenson with “irrational and scurrilous abuse” for his test-ban platform throughout the campaign. He lost again in the second of two presidential campaigns against then-incumbent President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Yet over the course of the next few years, public opinion about nuclear weapons testing would change dramatically, causing one journalist to note in hindsight that Stevenson had been “The Man Who Was Right Too Soon.”

By 1958, protest groups began to coalesce around the interconnectedness of weapons proliferation, nuclear testing, environmental and public health, foreign policy, and the struggle for world peace. These anti-nuclear organizations – perhaps the best-known are the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy and, later, Women Strike for Peace – gained prominence in the public dialog by warning of the dangers of testing radiation and the threat of global nuclear annihilation. This was the very message that Stevenson had advocated earlier in the decade.

Also in 1958, President Eisenhower, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan voluntarily placed a moratorium on all nuclear testing. Although the moratorium dissolved during international crises in 1961 and 1962, the brief testing respite set a series of international talks in motion that would eventually result in the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963. Stevenson’s conviction about the necessity for such an agreement did not flag in the years following his second defeat. As ambassador to the United Nations during the Kennedy administration, he remained a prominent voice in nuclear policy discussions.

Stevenson’s long engagement with test ban proposals did not go unnoticed by the public. As test ban negotiations progressed, some citizens suggested that Stevenson deserved credit for beginning the discussion in 1956. Several of those documents are now housed in the Public Policy Papers’ digital collections. Especially of note is the newspaper editorial arguing that for his foresight and courage, at the very least Stevenson deserved to receive one of the ceremonial pens used to sign the treaty (Edwin A. Lahey, “Adlai Entitled to Treaty Pen,” Chicago Daily News, 3 August 1963).

The Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed on August 5, 1963 by all three nuclear states, banned nuclear tests performed above ground, under water, and in outer space. Upon the Senate’s ratification of the treaty, Stevenson humbly reflected, “I have been working for an agreement to stop nuclear testing since the 1956 Presidential campaign. So this is a happy day for me. And I think this first step on the long, rocky road to safety and sanity is an historic day for the world.”

—

This year is the 70th in this Atomic Age. Although the uncertainties and tensions of the Cold War are quickly fading into history, the consequences of global nuclear development reverberate today. When new nations acquire, or attempt to acquire nuclear technology, the world listens and holds its breath. Indeed it may be some time before we reach the end of Stevenson’s “long, rocky road.”

Sarah Robey is a doctoral candidate in American history at Temple University. Her dissertation, “The Atomic American: Citizenship in a Nuclear State, 1945-1963,” examines civic life and nuclear preparedness in the early Cold War. She is currently a visiting faculty member of the Department of American Studies at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

A recently donated film long thought lost has been digitized and is now viewable online. “Segregation and the South,” a film produced in 1957 by the Fund for the Republic, reported on race issues in the South since the 1954 Supreme Court decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case. It examined the slow progress of integration at elementary and secondary schools and colleges, as well as the white backlash to the decision. It also documented the Montgomery bus boycott. Much of the footage came from news organizations like CBS and NBC that was re-packaged, but some original material was filmed in Clarksdale, Mississippi, by writer and director James Peck. Broadcast on June 16, 1957, a Sunday, from 5-6 p.m., it aired on over 30 ABC affiliates, 12 in the South, but none in the Deep South.

Narrated by prominent voice actor Paul Frees, pioneer television journalist George Martin Jr. served as executive producer, and it was Martin’s son who donated his father’s copy of the 16mm film to the Mudd Manuscript Library.

Many notable civil rights figures of the time are featured (though some are not identified) including Ralph Abernathy (31:56: “No we’re not tired”), UN diplomat Ralph Bunche (16:35: “No one has ever been known to enjoy rights posthumously”), NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall (7:10 and 16:56), Rosa Parks (31:17 where she tells of her refusal to give up her seat on a bus that sparked the boycott), and NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins (7:51 and 10:03). In addition, the prominent union leader within the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, A. Phillip Randolph, is featured (10:07).

Martin Luther King is featured prominently several times (7:42: “There is a brand new Negro in the South, with a new sense of dignity and destiny;” 34:02; 36:56; 38:30; 38:46; and at 39:07 responding to the violent backlash that followed the end of segregated buses in Montgomery: “Yes, it might even mean physical death , but if physical death is the price that some must pay to free our children from a permanent life of psychological death, then nothing could be more honorable.”)

Though a less notable figure in the movement, the film also features Gus Courts (42:15) of Belzoni, Mississippi. He describes the intimidation he faced after registering to vote, including being shot while in the grocery store he owned and operated. The co-founder of his town’s NAACP chapter, in the clip here, Courts noted Humphrey County had 17,000 African American citizens, that 400 had paid the poll tax, 94 had registered, but after threats, only one remained registered—Courts himself.

Countering them is a host of southern politicians who defend segregation as a long-standing Southern tradition including:

Gov. James P. Coleman of Mississippi (18:18) who pledges that there will be no changes in Mississippi society; Mississippi Senator James Eastland (13:15: “You are not going to permit the NAACP to take over your schools;” and at 39:55: his use of the filibuster to block civil rights legislation); Georgia Senator Walter F. George (14:43,reading a portion of the Southern Manifesto to resist Brown), and Georgia governor Herman Talmadge (19:11: “There are two things God never made. One of them is a mule, the other is a mulatto.”)

Average citizens opposed to any change in racial status are featured as well. One man (41:06) describes the boycott of rock and roll /Be-bop music in his community. The boycott was organized by Alabaman Asa Carter (41:36) who states that “We consider it a plot to undermine the moral standard of the Anglo Saxon race and place him on the level with the Negro.” Another salient moment features a student at the University of Alabama, who states, “Integration is inevitable; however, the South isn’t ready for the step and feel that that time should be decided by the South. It is their decision to take.” (44:23). In other words, it is the white people of the South as a matter of popular sovereignty —not the federal government—that should determine whether or not integration should be implemented.

Mississippi segregationist Conwell S. Sykes (8:21) proclaims “We have absolutely no intention of integrating in the South those areas that were segregated for at least 100 years.” Leroy Percy, a Mississippi cotton planter (12:26) states that the Supreme Court told them their way of life is wrong and this created a shockwave in the South. Another man (16:08) says “Give us time. You may recall that it took them 75 years to tell us what to do, [they] ought to give us 50 years to comply.” Another ( 11:51) delivers the stereotypical canard “Some of my best friends are Negroes… We love our people.”

The Ku Klux Klan is featured throughout the film, with speeches and images of rallies. When three women members (9:46), one clutching an infant to her chest, are asked why they joined the Klan, they respond because it stands for White Supremacy.

Among all of this overheated rhetoric, the narrator notes that realistic discussions of education and the law were lost, adding that the atmosphere was such that people felt that the choice was the KKK or full out integration. There was no middle ground.

On another note, the film captures footage of several other important school desegregation cases pre and post-Brown that further illustrate the gradual and varying responses (in the border states) to Brown’s clarion call for the desegregation of public schools “with all deliberate speed,” including that of Autherine Lucy. She was the first African American to enroll at the University of Alabama in 1952; however, upon finding out Lucy was black, the school administrators expelled her. She re-enrolled in 1956 after nearly three years of challenging the schools decision in court (45:00).

The film tries to end on a hopeful note by featuring Clarksdale, Mississippi (51:00). A town of 20,000 evenly divided between the two races, the inequity between the white and black sides of town are depicted, including a modern school for white children and an overcrowded and dilapidated building with no indoor restrooms for the black children. Post-Brown, the all-white school board has begun to meet with African American parents to discuss problems and the film states that this is “A new beginning for Clarksdale, the beginning of interracial communication at the community level.”

The film’s epilogue (58:44) notes that race is the “deepest problem of our country,” reflecting W.E.B. Dubois statement in 1903 that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line.” In calling for increased tolerance, the film concludes, “We have seen how far we have come; you know how far we still have to go.”

The film was part of the Fund for the Republic’s Newsfilm Project, but it was also its swansong. Before “Segregation and the South” aired, the Fund’s board had voted to discontinue the program. During the project’s 22-month existence, its three full-time employees, including George M. Martin, Jr., who served as its director, created dozens of newsclips that it supplied to television stations around the country to further the Fund’s agenda of promoting civil rights and democracy.

A note about the language and images in this film: The producers of the film were aware that some of the content was raw and they inserted this warning at its start: “Many people will find certain scenes in this report unpleasant. They are included because they have a place in the record of a serious social problem.” Time has done nothing to change this, and if anything, the words used and images depicted bite even harder, but the historical necessity to confront them has not lessened.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2014/05/lost-and-found-segregation-and-the-south/feed/01993 Baccalaureate Speaker Garry B. Trudeauhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2013/06/1993-baccalaureate-speaker-garry-b-trudeau/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2013/06/1993-baccalaureate-speaker-garry-b-trudeau/#commentsMon, 03 Jun 2013 13:06:51 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/?p=359Continue reading →]]>On Sunday June 6th,1993 at 2pm students were seated in the University Chapel to hear the remarks of Baccalaureate speaker Garry B. Trudeau, cartoonist and creator of Doonesbury. Trudeau was also the first person to receive a Pulitzer for a comic strip.

This film shows some of the only documentation of the 1993 Baccalaureate ceremony to be found in the archives. This is the entire ceremony. (Trudeau’s portion of the ceremony begins at 18:20)

For more about the history of the Princeton Baccalaureate and Commencement Week activities throughout history, see our accompanying blogs:

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2013/06/1993-baccalaureate-speaker-garry-b-trudeau/feed/0Princeton’s 250th Anniversary Commencement with speaker President Bill Clintonhttps://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2013/05/princetons-250th-anniversary-commencement-with-speaker-president-bill-clinton/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2013/05/princetons-250th-anniversary-commencement-with-speaker-president-bill-clinton/#commentsThu, 30 May 2013 14:00:11 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/?p=357Continue reading →]]>On June 6th, 1996, as part of the University’s 250th Anniversary celebration, U.S. President Bill Clinton delivered the principal address at the 249th Commencement ceremonies, a departure from the Princeton tradition of having the University President deliver the ceremony’s major remarks.

The video includes the entire commencement program starting with the procession (00:02), then the remarks of Princeton University President Harold Shapiro (4:40), the Latin Salutatory of Charles Parker Stole (6:40), Provost Jeremiah Ostriker (10:47), Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel (13:00), the Valedictory of Brian Patrick Duff (21:25), Dean of the Graduate School John Wilson (25:31), Dean of the Faculty Amy Gutmann (29:28), University Board of Trustees chair Robert H. Rawson ’66 (32:39), and the presentation of Clinton’s honorary degree (33:00).

At (41:58) President Harold T. Shapiro gives a history of U.S. Presidents participating in Princeton Commencements.

President William Clinton’s speech runs (44:52-1:15:05).

The program concludes with final remarks from President Shapiro and the reading of the Benediction by Dean Gibson (1:17:19) and then the singing of Old Nassau.

Here you can read the transcript as a part of The American Presidency Project.

In 2010 the Princeton University Archives uploaded the following video from C-TEC highlighting the broadcast preceding speech. It includes a number of interviews with faculty and staff.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2013/05/princetons-250th-anniversary-commencement-with-speaker-president-bill-clinton/feed/3Class of 1929 Commencement and a potpourri of student activitieshttps://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2013/05/class-of-1929-commencement-and-a-potpourri-of-student-activities/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2013/05/class-of-1929-commencement-and-a-potpourri-of-student-activities/#commentsTue, 28 May 2013 14:05:45 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/?p=355Continue reading →]]>While the traditions around Commencement have changed some over the University’s 267 year history, overall it is a remarkably consistent ceremony. Let’s take a look back to 1929. This video shows a number of scenes from a typical Commencement week. We begin with the procession of graduates led by the faculty. Following that, you see a view of the audience assembled on front campus, with some shots of the stage in front of Nassau Hall, where the event is still held today. Finally you will see a few members of the Class of 1929 receiving their degrees, something that has changed. As the typical graduating class now is over 1,100, diplomas are distributed after the commencement ceremony, not handed out individually.

The golf team is featured at 3:50, polo at 4:54, members of the Daily Princetonian, Bric-a-Brac, student council, Triangle Club and Senior Prom committee featured at 6:16, baseball at 8:56 and finally the P-rade at 10:32.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2013/05/class-of-1929-commencement-and-a-potpourri-of-student-activities/feed/2“She Flourishes:” Chapters in the History of Princeton Women.https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/11/post/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/11/post/#commentsMon, 07 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/11/post/Continue reading →]]>Mudd Manuscript Library’s new exhibition features women at Princeton, from the days of Evelyn College (1887-1897), mainly attended by daughters of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary professors, to the appointment of Shirley Tilghman as the first woman president of Princeton University in 2001. For the first time our exhibit is accompanied by historical film footage from the archives. This compilation of segments from films and videos, most of which was featured previously in The Reel Mudd, is shown here.

The footage covers forty years of history of Princeton women, from the admission of Sabra Meservey as the first woman at the Graduate School in 1961 to Shirley Tilghman’s presidency. Subjects covered include the introduction of coeduation, student activism and Sally Frank, and activities of the Women’s Center and SHARE (Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources, and Education).

The compilation opens with footage of the Class of 1939’s junior prom in 1938 (taken from its Class film), which was attended by 606 women (all listed by name in the Daily Prince). Women only entered academic life at Princeton in 1961, when Sabra Meservey was admitted at to the Graduate School. The footage at 0:37 shows Meservey’s humorous account of her initial conversation with President Robert Goheen, who ultimately oversaw the introduction of undergraduate coeducation in 1969, and wanted to use Meservey as a “test case” at the Graduate School. (For the full story, see the the blog about the Celebration of Coeducation at the Graduate School.)

The only filmed recollections about the early years of coeducation were found on the documentary Looking Back: Reflections of Black Princeton Alumni (1:32), created on the occasion of Princeton’s 250th anniversary in 1996. The changes on campus did not please everybody. In 1974 Princeton icon Frederick Fox ’39 reached out to disgruntled alumni in the film A Walk in the Springtime, pointing out, perhaps tongue in cheek, that Nassau Hall’s two bronze tigers were male and female (3:19). In the following fragment, taken from the short Academy award winning film Princeton, A Search For Answers (1973), women feature prominently (3:55).

The last fragments feature woman activism and the gains of the women’s movement of the 1970s and the 1980s. Two fragments were taken from the Class of 1986’s Video Yearbook: a speech from Sally Frank ’80, who sued the last three all-male eating clubs (4:18), and a Women’s Center sit-in in May 1, 1986 (4:45). The last two fragments have not been featured yet in The Reel Mudd but will be shortly. The first is a sketch from “Sex on a Saturday Night,” a theater performance for freshmen about sexual harassment, presented by SHARE (5:11), The film ends with the inauguration of Shirley Tilghman (5:11) in 2001, taken from the documentary “Robert F. Goheen ’40, *48; Reflections of a President” (2006).

The exhibit “She Flourishes:” Chapters in the History of Princeton Women may be visited during Mudd Library’s opening hours on weekdays between 9.00 am and 4.45 pm. from now until the end of August 2012.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/11/post/feed/1A Princeton Degree For a Yalie: George H.W. Bush Visits Princeton, 1991https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/08/a-princeton-degree-for-a-yalie-george-hw-bush-visits-princeton-1991/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/08/a-princeton-degree-for-a-yalie-george-hw-bush-visits-princeton-1991/#commentsMon, 01 Aug 2011 19:10:00 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/08/a-princeton-degree-for-a-yalie-george-hw-bush-visits-princeton-1991/Continue reading →]]>On May 10, 1991, President George H.W. Bush came to Princeton’s campus to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and dedicate the University’s Social Science Complex. This $20 million dollar project included the newly constructed Bendheim and Fisher Halls, as well as a renovation of Corwin Hall. This Reel Mudd blog post includes video of both of these events, along with other scenes related to the President’s visit.

President Bush’s visit was notable for several reasons. This ceremony was Bush’s first appearance outside of Washington DC after suffering atrial fibrillation while jogging at Camp David. In addition, Bush’s speech (beginning at 00:50:26) was expected to be a major policy speech, though a report indicates that the president rewrote the address en route to Princeton in order to tone down direct attacks on Congress (Daily Princetonian, Volume 115, Number 65, 13 May 1991). While still peppered with criticism of Congress, the President’s talk was mainly a discussion of the Executive Branch’s policy making role compared to that of the Legislative, and Bush’s personal opposition to creating new bureaucracies. The speech is also peppered with humor about the Princeton/Yale rivalry and the President’s place within it (51:42), as well as Bush’s health(50:39), the Nude Olympics (51:22), John F. Kennedy (52:02), and the Princeton allegiances of Secretaries of State George Shultz ’42 and James Baker ‘52 (52:28).

Bush Receives his honorary degree from President Shapiro *64.

Historical Photograph Collection, Individuals Series, Box MP2

But, this ceremony was not without controversy, including the publication of an open letter signed by hundreds of students who objected to the awarding of honorary degrees to Bush and Secretary of State James Baker (Daily Princetonian, Volume 115, Number 64, 10 May 1991). Furthermore, a crowd of approximately 250 protestors, including the “George Bush Reception Committee” gathered during the visit to protest issues including the Persian Gulf War, Bush’s veto of the 1990 Civil Rights Act, Presidential treatment of HIV/AIDS victims, and the nature in which Bush’s degree was awarded.

In fact, the awarding of Bush’s honorary degree was an unusual event. While US Presidents often receive honorary Princeton degrees, and Bush was the 17th President to receive this award, President Bush’s visit and degree granting occurred on May 10, several weeks before the traditional awarding of honorary degrees that occurs in conjunction with Commencement. This ceremony was especially extraordinary since Bush’s honorary Doctor of Laws was the first degree to be awarded outside of Commencement since Lyndon Johnson received his L.L.D. in 1966 (see, and the ceremony was also conducted in a closed-door gathering in the Faculty Room at Nassau Hall, instead of the usual grounds outside that building.

Anti Bush Protestors. Historical Photograph

Collection, Campus Life Series, Box SP9

Aside from President Bush, several other notable individuals gathered to celebrate this occasion, including Governor James Florio and former Princeton Presidents Robert Goheen and William Bowen. The conferring of the degree included a variety of speeches from individuals including Edmund H. Carpenter II ’43 (00:07:15) and James A. Henderson ’56 (00:04:20), while the Dedication of the Corwin-Bendheim-Fischer Complex included speeches from among others Governor Florio (00:36:54), Dean of the Chapel Joseph C. Williamson (00:36:57), and President Harold Shapiro (00:39:43).

The film was originally broadcast on the C-TEC cable channel and hosted by Princeton’s Andrea Diehl (Assistant to the President) and Nick Morgan (Director of Development Communications). Lasting about an hour and twenty six minutes, it also includes scenes such as Bush’s arrival via Marine One (0:00:10), the conferring of the degree (0:08:45), the Presidential dedication speech at the Social Sciences Complex, and interviews with Representative Dick Zimmer(1:14:57), and Princeton Borough and Township mayors Marvin Reed and Richard Woodbridge (1:19:14).

More information, along with photographs concerning Bush’s visit can be found in:

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/08/a-princeton-degree-for-a-yalie-george-hw-bush-visits-princeton-1991/feed/2Lobby Case Exhibition on Moe Berghttps://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/07/lobby-case-exhibition-on-moe-berg/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/07/lobby-case-exhibition-on-moe-berg/#commentsMon, 18 Jul 2011 12:47:04 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/?p=71Continue reading →]]>Primarily known as a Major League catcher and coach, Morris “Moe” Berg was also a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II, as well as a lawyer, linguist, and Princeton graduate. As a member of the class of 1923, Berg excelled scholastically and athletically by graduating with honors in Modern Languages (he studied Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Sanskirt), and playing first base and shortstop for the Princeton Tigers. While his batting average was low- Berg inspired a Major League scout to utter the phrase, “Good field, no hit”- he was known at Princeton for his strong arm and sound baseball instincts.[i]

The exhibit highlights the varied roles of Berg in its presentation of Princeton memorabilia from the class of 1923, Berg baseball cards, and other material culled from Mudd’s two collections on Moe Berg: The Moe Berg Collection (1937-2007), and the newly acquired Dr. and Mrs. Arnold Breitbart Collection on Moe Berg (1934-1933). Also on display is a 1959 baseball signed by Berg and other Major League players, on loan from Arnold Breitbart. The Moe Berg exhibit can be located in the lobby of the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, and will be on display until August 31.

[i] Dasidoff, Nicholas. The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg. New York: Pantheon, 1994.

]]>https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/07/lobby-case-exhibition-on-moe-berg/feed/0“Princeton: A Search for Answers,” 1973https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/06/princeton-a-search-for-answers-1973/
https://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/06/princeton-a-search-for-answers-1973/#commentsFri, 24 Jun 2011 13:00:00 +0000http://blogs.princeton.edu/reelmudd/2011/06/princeton-a-search-for-answers-1973/Continue reading →]]>During a morning session of the President’s Conference in the early 1970s, a member of the student panel told the assembled alumni that she had come to Princeton “not to find a way of making a living, but instead to find a way of making a life.” Filmmakers Julian Krainin and DeWitt Sage used this statement in their proposal in 1972 for a new recruitment film for Princeton University. “It seems that it should be the responsibility of a great university not so much to answer the question of how to “make a life,” but to present the student with at least the tools and courage with which he or she might discover the answer.”

The resulting film Princeton: A Search for Answerswon an Oscar in 1974 for Documentary Short Subject. Film producer and director Joshua Logan ’31, who had started his stage writing and directing career in Princeton’s Triangle Club, was one of the first to see it. “I not only believe that it is a moving, funny, and stimulating account of a University I once knew but had almost forgotten,” he wrote to his fellow members of the Academy. “It tells about the gleam that flits across the human mind and gives us all something to hope for, to live for. It makes the human race quite a bit more respectable then (sic) we have recently thought it to be.” The film which has recently been remastered (2013) is featured here.

In order to write the film treatment and script, Dewitt Sage spent several months on campus, attending classes and seminars, and talking with students, faculty and staff. Once the film treatment was approved, Julian Krainin took over to supervise the actual camera work. During 1972 and early 1973 fourteen and a half hours of 16mm color footage was shot for the thirty minute film. The outtakes are kept in the University Archives. To accompany the film, the Office of Communications produced a handsome brochure with quotes and information about the faculty featured (see SearchForAnswers.pdf).

As already suggested by the title, the film’s main emphasis is on education, scholarship, and student-instructor relations. The film includes footage of tutorials and lectures by physics professor and Dean of the Faculty Aaron Lemonick (1:50, 9:11), and professors Edward Cone (Music, 3:01, 29:48), John Wheeler (Physics 7:05), Daniel Seltzer (English, 12:39), and Ann Douglas Wood (English, 25:02). Wheeler is filmed during a lecture about the implications of black holes (he is credited with coining the phrase in 1967), while Dan Seltzer teaches a Shakespeare acting class and lectures about Henry IV (Part 2). Additional footage features Princeton president William Bowen during a question and answer session with alumni and undergraduates (9:55, 26:11, 27:49) and the work of two graduate students: Niall O’Murchadha (Physics, 5:10, 26:51) and Maury Wolfe (Architecture, 16:11).

Produced only a few years after the introduction of co-education in 1969, at a time when diversification of the student body was a priority for Princeton, women and African American students feature prominently in campus scenes (9:40, 20:56, 24:36) and in the class rooms. There is little emphasis in the film on extracurricular activities. In addition to footage of the Glee Club singing Bach in Alexander Hall (directed by Professor of Music Walter Nollner, 17:47), sport scenes are limited to marathon running and rowing (23:25). Additional footage includes students sharing their views of Princeton in a pub (19:45, the legal drinking age was still eighteen!) Some historical photographs and footage is shown at 22:27, including a fragment of a chemistry lecture by the famous Hubert Alyea (previously featured) and the Triangle Club.

Prior to winning the Oscar in 1974, Princeton: A Search for Answers had already won awards or citations at the International Film Festival in Florence and in the Atlanta International Film Festival, the Columbus Film Festival and from the Information Film Producers of America. After winning the Oscar it appeared on Channel 13 in the New York area, with a favored “black spot” billing in the TV schedule of the New York Times. Not everybody was in favor of the film, however. “The movie doesn’t focus enough on students. It narrowly emphasizes the strictly academic aspect of Princeton–the classroom experience, the faculty. It also concentrates too heavily on the science-technology fields. In all these ways, the movie presents a distorted view of Princeton,” wrote the Daily Princetonian. Admission officers experienced a problem with this too: when showing the film to students at secondary schools, they found that students were often over-awed and “left feeling they might not measure up to Princeton’s standards.” For this reason officers chose to show the film, which was used throughout the 1970s, only at the end of a general presentation about Princeton.

It is interesting to compare the recruitment film with the staged Orange Key Society film, made for prospective students in 1962 (before the revolutionary years that changed the face of the campus dramatically) and the 1991 recruitment film Princeton University: Conversations that Matter. The latter film, which also focused on scholarship and the dialogue between students and faculty, followed a similar format, opening and closing with a music professor, and including a fiery class about Shakespeare. Princeton: A Search for Answers, had set a new standard.